She and Ash ran through the desert towards the trial with water. This time Sheetal kept a loose hand on Ash and sped alongside him. With her new shards she did not need to hold on to him. She could use her wind shard to keep pace with him if he did not use the full capability of his speed shards. Still, he was faster than her and he kept a hand on him to be dragged along in his wake.
At first, Sheetal didn't have to do much. Ash ran through the desert and she just followed. Then the sandstorm Ash had been talking about earlier caught up with them. Ash tried to outrun it but then his potentiality ran out and he had slowed. She had watched as the winds began blowing her onto her face and tugging on her clothes.
Before the storm made it worse, Sheetal had instinctively done something that she could not explain.
Okay that was a lie. She knew what she had done but not totally.
Sheetal knew her physics and had an instinctive understanding of this place, whatever it was. Basically, this place that held all the trials did not completely break the laws of physics. The shards in their bodies helped them bend it. With that understanding she had spent one Creck to learn more about her gravity shard.
This time the knowledge of transfer was smoother. She understood the basics of gravity. It was all about the attractive forces of matter and how those forces got amplified when matter came together to create huge chunks in space. This time the knowledge didn’t have to fight her conceptions and settled into her brain only adding stuff here and there when her knowledge was either wrong or lacking. In the end it just showed her how to use gravity for her benefit.
The process was over in the blink of an eye and Sheetal wanted, no, Sheetal needed to know more if they had to survive the wild sandstorm heading towards them. So she spent another creck to understand the wind shard and its capability.
Once again the system filled in the gaps in her knowledge and then gave her the answers she was looking for. When it was over Sheetal was left pouting. The answer was so simple that she did not understand why she hadn’t thought of it herself. And then she realised that she couldn’t have thought of it because she hadn’t known how to use her new shards.
Sheetal frowned and then with an effort of will let the negative spiral of thoughts go. It was easier than before and she looked at her new Mental shard in her hud and wondered if it was helping her do that.
Finally she looked at all the shards floating in the empty space on her hud. She pushed the gravity shard into the ball of wind and polar forces. As soon as the gravity shard made contact with the ball of wind it compressed and the winds started shrieking inside her soul. Not done yet, Sheetal pushed matter and metal into the ball. The ball of wind began to grow rapidly until it was a large ball of dark rocks with black veins of metal topped with howling winds.
That left her with one last shard. The one that refused to go into the ball. Her mental shard. She let it be. And looked turned to look at the dust cloud heading to envelop them. She raised one arm above herself and created a circle over her head.
The result was instantaneous. The wind around them died down to a soft breeze, the sand fell before it hit them and the ground underneath Ash’s footsteps became firmer.
Sheetal smiled. It was so simple. All she needed to do was create a bubble. A bubble whose outer edge of the wall was the representation of the gravitational force of the ball inside her. The middle was the representation of the polar forces it exerted and the inner layer was the wind that howled in her soul. Those winds fought against the storm’s force only letting in the calmest winds.
Sheetal nodded in appreciation of her handy work. She looked at Ash and saw his glazed eyes, sweat streaked face, and frown. She was about to ask what was wrong when Ash stumbled. He righted himself instantly and kept running. But just after a few steps he stumbled again. This time his muscles cramped and his body stiffened.
She had been so busy in her work that when Ash stumbled and fell, She wasn’t ready. Her body did not go down with him, she just flew on tumbling through the air. Before she could really panic a tight grip settled on her flailing arm and pulled her back.
She gasped in pain as her forward momentum dragged her and her dangling legs back.
She hissed “That hurt you, barbarian.” and slapped Ash on his stiff forearm.
Ash grunted “Eh… Sorry… I just…” Ash apologised and then grabbed his left arm with a pained expression.
She stopped. Ash never apologised. The last time around was five months ago. And even then he had not been sorry. He had apologised when ordered to do so by his mother. Not to mention that it was insincere and delivered with a cheeky smile.
Right now he wasn’t smiling. He had gone from holding his left arm to rubbing his chest while looking at something in the distance.
She looked at the spot he was looking at and saw nothing as usual.
“Ash? What’s going on?”
He glanced at her with a contemplative look and answered “Something is up ahead.”
“Yeah, the trial, right?”
“No, not that.” Ash answered in a pained voice and grimaced again.
Ash pointed in the general direction “I think they are people and they are somehow hiding from us. They must be using magic. Otherwise I think I would have caught a glimpse of their shards.”
“I still don’t understand how you do that.”
Ash chuckled mirthlessly “I am awesome.”
“Nishachars or something worse?”
“No, not them. This magic smells different.”
“Smells?”
Ash slumped on the ground “Yeah, can’t you smell the nishachar magic? It smells like rotten eggs.”
Sheetal looked at Ash “No, I don’t smell magic Ash.” She paused and asked “And what does this magic smell like?”
“Like a petrol pump.”
Sheetal took a moment to process Ash’s words and then a better question popped into her head “Wait a minute, so what does my magic smell like.”
Ash looked at Sheetal with an arched brow “Like hay fever.”
Sheetal blinked “What? What does hay fever smell like.”
Ash chuckled “Like the smell of flowers, fresh cut grass and spring. It’s absolutely annoying. Makes me want to sneeze all the time.”
“Ha…Ha…Very funny, Ash. So these people are not enemies? Maybe we should go talk to them.”
Ash just gave her a look “No She, these guys have been following us since the trials. They stood by and watched while we battled the mental guy. And they didn’t help. Now they are out there in the sandstorm. And we don’t know what they want. I say we keep clear of them.”
“Ash, that’s going to be hard with whatever is going on with you.”
Ash shook his head “I am going to be okay. Just give me a few minutes. And then we will continue with our plan of getting all the water, food and shards we can get our hands on before more of those stinky blue people show up.”
“Ash, you do know that we are in a better place than when we started. We can handle things now.”
“Can we?”
She glared right back “I can fly now dumbo.”
“Yeah, straight up and then you float back to the ground five feet from where you started.”
She flung her hands in the air and started floating away from Ash. In response the area clear of the sandstorm moved with her.
“Look. We are in the storm and it’s not hitting us. I did that.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
In response Ash looked around and blinked “Huh? When did you do that?”
Sheetal looked at Ash’s baffled expression. She realised that he had been out of it for a while now and he had missed her creating the barrier.
“A while back, Ash. Are you okay?”
Ash took in deep calming breaths and his face relaxed “Yeah, I think I am going to be now. Just give me a bit. Now that we don’t have to run, I can take a while and recuperate.”
Sheetal looked at Ash and began grumbling “Your stubborn little mother clucker. Why are you telling me what the heck is wrong with you?”
“Uh… She, what are you doing?” Ash asked.
“Cursing!”
Ash raised his eyebrows.
Sheetal just looked at Ash “Fine, you try to curse.”
“Not what I meant. I mean why are you slithering to the right?”
“I am trying to pace up and down but I am using most of my powers to keep this storm off us, okay?”
“Just so you know you are really bad at it. Although, if there was a sport about pacing, really-really slowly? You might win an Olympic medal. Just a bronze though. I bet some old lady would beat you.”
Sheetal didn’t respond. She turned away from Ash and looked at the wall of sand separating her from the rest of the world and screamed.
“Aaaaahhhhh!”
Ash ignored her outburst and when she was done, he asked “Feel better?”
“Actually, yes. I do.”
Ash chuckled and blinked. He empathetically scratched his midriff “Damn that is weird. There is a big ball of rock inside you now...”
Sheetal looked at Ash as he stopped “What? Oh. Can you stop looking inside me please”
Ash snorted “Like I have a choice.” Then his smile turned into a full grin “Hey She, congrats, you’ve got balls now.”
Sheetal rolled her eyes “Really?”
Ash grinned back "Okay, one is smaller than the other but who am I to judge?”
“Ash, stop trying to change the topic.” Sheetal gave Ash a hard look and asked “What is wrong with you?”
“Uh… I don’t want to say.”
“That’s really mature, Ash.”
“Listen if I say anything you will get mad again and you will scream. Then I will scream. Then we will get into a catfight and we will end up rolling in the sand trying to claw each others faces. That will just end up in dirt getting in our clothes and in our privates. So let’s just avoid all that and drop the topic, okay?”
“Catfight?”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it.”
“No, I haven’t but if you don’t tell me what is going on. I will fling you in the air.”
Ash looked at She and tried to laugh her words off then her serious expression made him reconsider his next words.
Sheetal nodded “That’s right buddy, try me.”
Ash slowly raised his hands “Okay. Fine. Just don’t start flipping out, okay?”
Sheetal folded her hands over her chest and asked “What did you do now?”
“You know how I slotted four speed shards inside me?”
“Yes?”
“Well that was kind of a wrong move.”
“Explain.” Sheetal growled.
“Well one of those speed shards I put in was in my right atrium which is…”
“Your heart?” Sheetal asked in a high pitched voice.
“Uh… You look like you are going to scream at me again.”
“What did I tell you about not putting these shards in your vital areas?” Sheetal asked in a flat tone.
“No, you said, head. I didn’t put anything in my head.”
Sheetal took a deep breath to calm herself and then asked “So, what happened.”
“Well, I kind of had a stroke.”
“A heart attack?”
“No, not a heart attack. It was a little stroke. The boxes came flying up and told me that I had a small little…” Ash looked at Sheetal's thunderous expression and asked “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Show me your shards.” Sheetal ordered.
“Hold on. I am not done with my explanation just yet.”
Sheetal gave Ash an incredulous look “Now what did you do?”
“Well, apparently my heart wasn’t strong enough so I decided to make it strong with the shard you could use.”
“The strength shard?”
“No, I decided to use that later. The best place for that was in my arms. But since I only had one, and I didn’t want to have one buffed up arm of those gym rats, I decided to wait for a better time. So, I used the density shard.”
“What the heck is wrong with you!?” Sheetal screamed
“She, you are screaming again.”
“You can’t shove the shards just anywhere.” Sheetal moved towards Ash.
Ash backed away a step and then stopped “Why?”
“Because it has to make sense.” Sheetal took a breath and started again “Ash. We can improve these shards by increasing their potency. All that potentiality we got is used to do that.”
Ash gave her a blank look “Uh… What?”
“Have you not been reading your notifications?”
“The spam? No. I just hit the ball and shut it off.” Ash dismissed the thought.
Sheetal closed her eyes and counted to ten.
“Hello? Ash to She. Why do you have your eyes closed?”
Sheetal opened her eyes and glared at her… At her… friend? No. Not a friend. Well something else.
“Ash, what happens when you increase the strength of your speed shard and not your density shard? Which are both next to your heart?”
“Umm…”
“Your heart is going to fail.” Sheetal explained.
Ash gave Sheetal a strange look.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Sheetal asked.
Ash gave Sheetal a guilty look “Well… It kind of already happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“But you are wrong too. It doesn’t work like that. If I had just used the density shard on my heart, then maybe. But I added the density shard to stabilise my heart, not the other way.”
“Explain” Sheetal moved towards Ash and looked at him with a steely glare.
Ash stopped at the look Sheetal was giving him.
“You know, when we were fighting that crazy constable, I needed to use as much speed as I could. So I put a speed shard in my heart. After that it kept beating faster and I could feel it straining…”
“You were having a heart attack while we were fighting?” Sheetal asked in a deadly voice.
“No.” Ash said unconvincingly and quickly added “The guy was already dead. So, I decided to sit with you while my heart stopped doing weird things.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Sheetal snarled.
“Well, you started acting all tough and killed a guy by stabbing him a lot. And then you went and got all silent and broody. So I decided to broach the subject later?”
“And?”
Ash scratched the back of his head “Well right now, it happened again so to stop my heart from bursting I put in the density shard.”
“Right now? When you fell, you almost died?”
“No?” Ash lied as he scooted backwards from an angry Sheetal.
Sheetal gave him a flat look.
“Relax. I wouldn’t have died. Every time my heart did the aching thing, the glowy thing happened, and it fixed it.” Ash replied in a squeaky voice.
“The glowing thing is our potentiality being used to repair our organs to bring us back from the brink of death you blockhead.”
“Well, it was a little glowing thing only around my heart.”
Sheetal rushed at Ash and grabbed him by the collar of his dirty white t-shirt. She growled “Ash, you bonehead. If you do anything like this again. I will make you fly.”
Ash felt She’s power encompass him and jolt him upwards. He looked at his folded feet which were now hovering a foot above the ground.
“Understand?” Sheetal asked with the same growl.
Ash nodded quickly “Okay. Okay. Calm down.”
Sheetal closed her eyes and let Ash go. He fell back to the ground and rubbed his bottom.
With her closed eyes she heard him scamper away from her while muttering “How the heck do you know where to put the shards anyway?”
Sheetal opened her eyes and glared at the younger man “I just bought a book called Soul. hard. Maintenance. You dimwit.”
“Oh, that. But isn’t it just maintenance though.”
“Ash. Shut up. I am trying to figure out the best way to handle this.”
“It’s okay, She. Listen. I don’t need a book to tell me what’s going on. I can see my shards. They are okay.”
Sheetal turned to look at Ash “Ash, what does your magic smell like?”
“Huh?” Ash was silent for a moment and then shrugged “I don’t know. I can’t smell my own magic.”
“Exactly. Then how the heck can you self diagnose yourself?”
“Okay that is some straight up doctor talk and you are not that kind of doctor.”
“Listen to me you dumbo…”
Ash shot up to his feet “No She, you listen to me. I will be okay. I just can’t push myself that hard right now.”
“How do you even know that?”
“I can see shards and what they do. This one is changing my heart into something tougher. Until that happens I can’t push myself like I did with that blue skinned mental guy.”
Sheetal blinked and stopped. For a moment she just looked at Ash.
“Yeah.” Ash smiled and in a confident tone added “I am awesome.”
“Right, awesomely dumb.”
“Hey!” Ash chuckled “I know what I am doing. If I get close to death I will do that glowing stuff and come back all fixed.”
Sheetal pinched the bridge of her nose “I repeat. You are a dimwit.”
“We concur.” A female voice announced.
Sheetal and Ash stiffened. They both slowly turned around. A strange figure was standing tall in the sandstorm just outside the barrier Sheetal had made. The sand and the winds lashed the world around it, but the figure just stood there like a statue.
“May we join you?” The figure asked.
Ash slowly drew out his tonfas “I was wondering when you would show yourself. Come on then, let’s have a look at you.”
The figure nodded and the futuristic armoured figure slowly walked towards them with their hands raised in a peaceful gesture.
Ash whispered “Okay. That’s fire bro.”
“Thank you.” A male voice responded from the helmet.
“Hey, what happened to the hot female voice?” Ash asked.
“I am still here.” This time the voice came from the armour.
Ash walked closer to the armoured figure and leaned in to look in the helmet. He frowned as the helmet’s visor remained opaque.
The man inside the helmet held up a hand and moments later a glowing seem began travelling down vertically in the middle of the helmet. The seam split into six as it sectioned the helmet into six separate parts. The helmet hissed as it released cool air and parted like clamps all the way from the top of the head to the neck. Then on unseen struts and hinges the parts slid onto the shoulders of the clean-cut man to create epaulettes.
Sheetal’s eyes lit up when she saw the mechanics of the helmet and then her eyes travelled down to the rest of the futuristic armour.
Ash on the other took two steps back with a frown adorning his face as he looked at Taran E65.
The man smiled “Hello! I am Taran E65. A scout from the Continuum forces. Do you mind talking to us?”
“Us?” Sheetal asked.
A moment later seven lights lit up the sandstorm and moved towards them. Sheetal slid towards Ash.
Ash took a combative stance “No. Not until you reveal the source of the hot voice.”
Sheetal turned to look at Ash with a disapproving look.
“What? I haven’t gotten some for three months. And that is because someone complained and decided to separate me from the staff. Not cool, She.”
Sheetal rolled her eyes “We couldn’t afford for you to bring attention to the initiative.”
“I wasn’t bringing any attention to us.”
“Yes, you were.”
“Do you think that after all the debauched things I was letting them do to me, anyone was unhappy? Much less talk about it?”
Taran looked at the two warders. They had squared off against each other and were ignoring him and the superb seven. He cleared his throat. “Hem… Hem… Hem…”
The warders completely ignored him and continued arguing.
Sheetal floated lower and glared “Oh yes, they talked. They sang when I questioned them.”
“Of course, they did. They were trying to save themselves.”
“You, seducing half the hospital staff was offensive. Organising an orgy? That was wrong on so many levels that I can’t put it in words.”
Ash quirked his lips “In my defence it wasn’t the first orgy. And they didn’t talk about that, did they?”
Suddenly all the armoured suits around them lit up their flood lights to their maximum levels blinding Ash and She momentarily. While Ash and She blinked away the after spots the female voice asked “Are you both always like this?”
“Hey, it’s the hot voice again.” Ash smiled “Hello, hot stuff. Which one are you?”
The voice chuckled “I am in every armour. To clarify you unasked question warder, I am an AI. But thank you for your kind words. However, if you want, I can introduce you to a willing biological individual who I am sure would enjoy your attention.”
Taran frowned “Marshall, if you are talking about Pretty. I do not approve.”
Ash stopped and looked around. The armoured suits were shaking in laughter.
“AI? You are an AI?”
“Yes.”
“Like, a code of ones and zeros?”
“Yes.”
“Well, dang me!” He responded in a deflated voice.
“Really?” Sheetal hissed.
Ash shrugged at Sheetal and then turned to Taran E65 “Okay armoured guy…” Ash turned his gaze to the armour and in a husky continued “And you, hot voice. What do you want?”
Taran gave Ash a look “Umm… My eyes are up here, warder.”
“Yeah, well I wasn’t speaking to you.”
“Ash!” Sheetal smacked Ash on his shoulder and floated ahead to address E65 “My partner here is a bit crass. But his question is valid. What do you all want?”
Taran E65 smiled “I want to accompany you into the trial and help you get, how did you put it, all the water, food and shards you can get your hands on.”
Sheetal raised an eyebrow and looked at Ash.
Ash grinned “Yup. They have been listening to us.”
Sheetal turned to look at Taran E65 for an explanation.
E65 just shrugged “If you want to keep your words private maybe you should consider not being so loud?”
Ash cocked his head to the side “Huh? Nah, we’ll be loud.”
Sheetal ignored Ash and continued “Why?”
“Well, I couldn’t help you earlier with the constable, I didn’t have adequate back up. Now that my people have arrived, let me make it up to you.”
“So, you were watching us.” Sheetal looked at Ash.
Ash looked from the man to the other figures in the storm lighting up the area with their floodlights and then back at Taran E65 “Okay, fine by me.”
“What?” Sheetal whirled at Ash.
“The man wants to help, She. Let’s let him help.”
“They have been spying on us.”
“Eh… Who cares? I am thirsty and hungry.”
Sheetal blinked and then looked at Ash’s expression. Somehow, she got the feeling that Ash was not saying something aloud and he just wanted her to agree with him. The feeling was so clear that she floated a step back and to her surprise agreed.
“Okay, lead on…” Sheetal paused “Uh… What was your name again?”
“Taran E65.”
Ash grimaced “E65? That’s a horrible name.”
“Yeah.” Sheetal nodded “How about you give us your real name.”
“Eff that. What about we just call you Tee.”
Taran looked from one warder to the other and sighed “Please don’t call me that.”
“Why not just Taran?”
Taran shook his head.
“How about E?”
Taran E65’s shoulders slumped “No.”